February112013

Admiral Horthy may be long gone, but just lately he appears to have become all the rage in modern Hungary. Newspapers sympathetic to the governing Fidesz party continually run glowing editorials about this ‘honourable’ man, along with statues and parks being awarded his name.

Despite their legacy as ‘The Alliance of Young Democrats’, some in the ageing and increasingly authoritarian Fidesz party have found a historical hero who was certainly no democrat. As the 1930s progressed, the electoral franchise was progressively choked off in Hungary, quietly ensuring a succession of increasingly nationalistic and right-wing governments. Areas where the social democrats were strongest were effectively deprived of the vote through bureaucratic manipulation and banning of trades union activity. Meanwhile, in rural areas, landlord control of the franchise was overt. The ‘good old days’ to which many Fidesz supporters refer to, were also the days when Roma were physically segregated into remote slums, invisible but for the occasional presence of the gendarmerie, who would brutally and violently ensure that the locals knew their position at the very base of society.

When a leading Fidesz organizer and friend of the Prime Minister declares in an opinion column that ‘most gypsies are animals’ it is against this historical context. Yet it’s also against the context of a Hungarian Right which has established no clear institutional ethical boundaries against racism, and which has increasingly relied upon nationalist rhetoric in the last 20 years. The ruling party in 1990′s first post-transition government, the MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum) even included Istvan Csurka among its leaders. Csurka was an overtly anti-Semitic nationalist politician, dedicated to restoring Hungary’s pre-World War One borders. His presence at the centre of post-transition political life indicated the weakness of democratic forces, even at the height of their supposed triumph. Even as Csurka was expelled from the collapsing MDF administration, the government engineered a ceremonial reburial of Admiral Horthy’s bones in his home village of Kenderes.

The Hungarian right’s love of ceremony and pageant – in somewhat embarrassing homage to the anachronisms of the United Kingdom – extended to a huge parade marking the relocation of the Crown to Parliament in 2000 – investing Parliament with ‘holy’ authority. Such mystical references are common currency across the Hungarian right-wing, whether supporters of ‘center-right’ Fidesz or ‘far-right’ Jobbik. It’s part of the deliberately mixed messages being sent by Fidesz. One week the Prime Minister can meet for photo-opportunity with rabbis, the next week, the Fidesz Deputy President can attend a commemoration for a Hungarian Nazi writer. There is always an eye for an opening.

Horthy might be a strange hero to many people inside and outside Hungary, but it’s especially alarming to consider that the same political forces who indulge in Horthy-worship are also the people centralising control of the Hungarian state (especially schools), redrawing a constitution and creating a whole new set of apparently ad-hoc electoral laws, the ultimate effect of which would be to make it very, very hard to elect a new government. Having won a two-thirds majority, Fidesz are attempting to exploit an opportunity to remake the administration of Hungary, as well as cementing their dominance over the future electoral process.

Anyone who remembers the 2002 Election, in which Fidesz attempted to defend its position in office against the Socialists, will remember the partial and disgraceful overt manipulation of public media. Government spokesmen and supporters dominated the programming. The editors of the public broadcasting channels even started broadcasting Fidesz rallies live-to-air – risking the ire of those who were looking to consume the normal diet of soaps and cheap cop dramas. The new electoral law attempted to consolidate this control of public media by preventing commercial radio and television channels from running party political programmes or advertisements during the campaign, leaving only the state-controlled media to provide political analysis. The intention was to drive the opposition off air.

Already we can see the beginnings of the 2014 campaign, with posters plastered on buses and placards around the city, blaming the previous government for Hungary’s problems. It seems much of the funding for this is already coming from state sources. When added to a number of bogus consultations concerning the constitution and the ‘job protection’ campaigns, Fidesz are spending an absolute fortune on communications. The next logical step is to remove the official state budget for political parties, thereby ensuring such massive communications machines are funded from either secretive or ‘grey’ sources. If enacted, it ensures a system that retains the outward trappings of democracy, whilst engaging in multiple instances of manipulation at different levels. The open gerrymandering of electoral districts is, from a UK perspective, more normal, but will further reduce the prospects of change in Hungary, whilst the reallocation of seats has been entirely driven by use of the two-thirds supermajority, with no attempt to garner a consensus.

Finally, and in tune with 1930s Hungary, the new electoral laws proposed a move away from a simple system of voter lists, to a system of voluntary registration. It is here that the government have been placed most under pressure, both internally and externally. Originally, the registration process was intended to involve people presenting themselves physically in a governmental office with the necessary forms of ID. Access to these offices could therefore be made as obscure, or as irregular as necessary, and would be a daunting test of organization and finance, as all parties would need to ferry many of their voters to the offices, or at least ensure as many were registered as possible. The Constitution Court has rejected the electoral laws, indicating dissent in the ranks – but it remains the undeniable case that the party leadership, Viktor Orban himself, wanted to push these changes through.

We could argue that Fidesz, at root, is nothing more than an electoral/communications machine, and in this sense is not so different to many other European political parties nowadays. This machine has even provided an easy cultural identity for Joe Public to adopt, a system of patronage for supporters and friends, plus a flexible and easily adaptable set of policies, which vary from economic liberalism, to nationalism, to oligarchy, depending on the lay of the land.

Yet the rancid nationalism and overt racism of many Fidesz supporters stops it being a question of abstract political science, and illustrates the dilemma that Fidesz has built for itself. For such a machine would obviously not want to risk being thrown out of office –a negative democratic verdict would be too costly to the many interests at stake in such a centralized system of patronage. Yet at the same time, Fidesz retains those same people who were part of the democratic opposition in the communist era, and whose political self-image is based partially upon being democrats in opposition to undemocratic communists. Fidesz need to distance itself from the far-right in some ways, whilst also retaining its nationalist rhetoric and feeding the monster it has helped to create.

By understanding that Fidesz are increasingly being torn in both directions, we can surely begin to appreciate that while the Association of Young Democrats may have a somewhat elastic understanding of the word ‘democracy,’ internal rivalries and dubious decision-making increasingly question the viability of Orban’s all-encompassing governing project. Paradoxically, this coincides with the continued consolidation of absolute power. This should not obfuscate – the prospects for democratic change and political engagement with social realities in Hungary appear singularly bleak, regardless of right-wing factionalism.

January282013

Aaron’s Army — powerful words from Carl Malamud. Aaron was part of an army of citizens that believes democracy only works when the citizenry are informed, when we know about our rights—and our obligations. An army that believes we must make justice and knowledge available to all—not just the well born or those that have grabbed the reigns of power—so that we may govern ourselves more wisely.

Vaurien the Chaos TCP Monkey — a project at Netflix to enhance the infrastructure tolerance. The Chaos Monkey will randomly shut down some servers or block some network connections, and the system is supposed to survive to these events. It’s a way to verify the high availability and tolerance of the system. (via Pete Warden)

All Trials Registered — Ben Goldacre steps up his campaign to ensure trial data is reported and used accurately. I’m astonished that there are people who would withhold data, obfuscate results, or opt out of the system entirely, let alone that those people would vigorously assert that they are, in fact, professional scientists.

December242012

Creating The Next Big Thing (Wired) — excellent piece showing Tim’s thinking. Apple. They’re clearly on the wrong path. They file patent suits that claim that nobody else can make a device with multitouch. But they didn’t invent multitouch. They just pushed the ball forward and applied it to the phone. Now they want to say, “OK, we got value from someone else, but it stops now.” That attitude creates lockup in the industry. And I think Apple is going to lose its mojo precisely because they try to own too much.

Open Observatory of Network Interference — to collect high quality data using open methodologies, using Free and Open Source Software (FL/OSS) to share observations and data about the kind, methods and amount of surveillance and censorship in the world.

November152012

Public Banking Institute President,
Ellen Brown, opens the first Public Banking In America Conference in
Philadelphia on April 27, 2012, followed by keynote speaker, political
economist, Gar Alperovitz.

September272012

Paying for Developers is a Bad Idea (Charlie Kindel) — The companies that make the most profit are those who build virtuous platform cycles. There are no proof points in history of virtuous platform cycles being created when the platform provider incents developers to target the platform by paying them. Paying developers to target your platform is a sign of desperation. Doing so means developers have no skin in the game. A platform where developers do not have skin in the game is artificially propped up and will not succeed in the long run. A thesis illustrated with his experience at Microsoft.

Learnable Programming (Bret Victor) — deconstructs Khan Academy’s coding learning environment, and explains Victor’s take on learning to program. A good system is designed to encourage particular ways of thinking, with all features carefully and cohesively designed around that purpose. This essay will present many features! The trick is to see through them — to see the underlying design principles that they represent, and understand how these principles enable the programmer to think. (via Layton Duncan)

Clay Shirky: How The Internet Will (One Day) Transform Government (TED Talk) — There’s no democracy worth the name that doesn’t have a transparency move, but transparency is openness in only one direction, and being given a dashboard without a steering wheel has never been the core promise a democracy makes to its citizens.

March262012

“[...]

The great austerity war: what caused the US deﬁcit crisis and who should pay to ﬁx it

The right-wing coalition has been so successful over recent decades that the long-run challenges facing the country today are daunting. The US economy no longer serves the needs of the majority of Americans and the global neoliberal capitalist system within which it is embedded is in crisis. A second global financial disaster is not unlikely in the intermediate future. We need radical changes in both our economic and political systems. We have to change to an economic model that can produce reasonable prosperity and security for American families with much less inequality than we have at present. To achieve such an economic transformation, we have to create a functioning democracy in which the informed priorities of the majority are reasonably reflected in the outcomes of the political process, one that will replace the oligarchic control over the politics of the present moment. To achieve a functioning democracy, we need a well-informed public that understands the causes of our economic problems and can distinguish between policies that are and are not in their interest.

February192012

Abstract: What is education for democracy? We urgently need to
reflect about this, since radical changes in education are occurring
without much public deliberation. Narrowly focusing on national economic
gain, nations, and their systems of education, are needlessly
discarding skills associated with the humanities and the arts, that are
needed to keep democracies alive: the ability to think critically; the
ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a
"citizen of the world"; and the ability to imagine sympathetically the
predicament of another person.

Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and
Ethics, appointed in the Philosophy Department, Law School, and
Divinity School. She is an Associate in the Classics Department and the
Political Science Department, a Member of the Committee on Southern
Asian Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She is
the founder and Coordinator of the Center for Comparative
Constitutionalism.

Her publications include the recently released From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law (2010), Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010), and Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (2011). Her current book in progress is Political Emotions: The Public Psychology of a Decent Society.

Hi, My Name is Diane Feinstein (BuyTheVote) -- presents the SOPA position and the entertainment industry's campaign contributions together with a little narrative. Clever and powerful. (via BoingBoing)

Today, January 18, is an important day for the Internet. Corporate websites, from Google to Twitpic, along with civil society groups and individuals, have all joined together in a common cause: to protest two American bills that could have grave effects for global online free expression.

As Global Voices' Executive Director Ivan Sigal has written, “there are powerful corporate and government forces who would prefer to see the openness and accessibility of the web restricted.” The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act (PIPA) would both force websites to pro-actively censor potentially copyrighted information, and could, as Sigal wrote, “inflict broad damage on the work of digital activists living under repressive regimes, as well as restrict basic speech freedoms around the world.”

Because these bills have the potential to affect Internet users worldwide, members of the global community have joined Americans in protest. From German digital rights group Netzpolitik to Open Media Canada to individual bloggers and social media users, the sentiment is the same: Stop these bills.

Many sites have chosen to express their opposition by blacking out their sites, either entirely or with an interstitial page. Danica Radovanovic (@DanicaR), writing for Australian blog network DejanSEO, discusses Wikipedia's decision to join the blackout, a decision that affects the site's diverse global community:

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a “blackout” of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

French organization La Quadrature du Net has joined its American counterparts in blacking out its website, displaying the following image:

The Pirate Party of Catalunya blacks out in solidarity

Pirate parties are among the most stringent opponents of the anti-piracy bills. In Spain, Catalunya, Switzerland, Argentina, Canada, and Sweden (among, almost certainly, many others), local pirate parties have joined in blacking out their websites.

We have decided to close our English-language website for 24 hours to symbolize the oppressive gag that would spread over the Internet as we know it if SOPA and PIPA are adopted. These bills would affect an incalculable number of Internet users who are innocent of any kind of intellectual property violation by forcing websites to block access to other sites suspected of vaguely-defined copyright breaches.

In some countries, bloggers have taken it upon themselves to educate their communities about the importance of opposing SOPA and PIPA. Lebanese blogger Mireille Raad has written an explanation for why Lebanese citizens should care about these bills. She writes:

Being a lebanese, doesn’t stop you from being an internet user – the SOPA will affect the internet in a bad way and it involves websites outside the US, and that’s yours…

…You should care and be pissed of, because, like it or not, the internet doesn’t exist in the clouds, it is made of companies that exist in countries and have to answer to local laws despite the fact that internet is “global”. This fact is making people worldwide care about the SOPA legislation – and even though you may feel powerless, you still should care and take online action – because all citizens in cyberspace are created equal and so their actions resonate equally

An earlier post Taiwanese freedom of information activist CK Hung dubs the anti-piracy bills “The Great Firewall of Chinamerica.” In a graphic [zh], the blogger demonstrates his point:

Those in power are happy with the “protection of intellectual property” or “denial of sex,” “harmonious society” as a bait that can never feed the mouth to convince citizens to support their policy and legal acts that will strengthen the control over the web (eg, choosing tools to facilitate the control) . And then by these laws and policies they can strengthen its monitoring of citizens' information. Those in power are happy that citizens see only a mirage, but ignore the road to the mirage are the collateral damages threatening the free and democratic society. No matter who the ultimate rulers in the end are–Microsoft, Apple, the Communist Party, the Democratic Party or Republican Party– the vast majority of victims are always the citizens.

而臺灣， 正是這兩大監控勢力交會處的絕佳實驗場所。

And Taiwan is the testing ground right at the intersection of these two great monitoring forces.

…Anyway, America is not the world, and intellectual property laws are territorial limitations and vary from country to country. For example, in Venezuela, the work enters the public domain sixty years after the author's death. However, by applying SOPA and PIPA, the United States wants me, you and any Siberian to be forced to comply with constraints that do not apply according to [local] law.

Although the international community is limited in how they can affect an American bill, the solidarity expressed in opposition to both bills is certainly helpful to U.S.-based activists. Aside from the aforementioned examples, bloggers have found numerous creative ways to do so, such as adding an anti-SOPA or anti-PIPA Twibbon or blacking out their WordPress blog. Fight for the Future is encouraging the international community to sign a petition to the State Department. But just writing about the implications of the two bills can help.

American citizens, on the other hand, have plenty of options. Here are just a few ways to get involved:

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

If that sounds like a careful effort to walk a thin line, it is: Some of the president’s biggest supporters in Hollywood and Silicon Valley and beyond are sharply divided over the bills, and the White House needs a way to keep both sides happy.